On behalf of our Funding Partner Meedan, Birmingham City University are excited to open a call for expressions of interest in two new PhD Studentships currently being created. The guidance given below will provide an indication of what Studentships of this type traditionally cover when fully established. Further details about the project are outlined below, as well as guidance on how to register an expression of interest in this project.
Doctoral Training Grant Funding Information
When set up, a Studentship would follow the traditional model of including a 36 month fully funded PhD Studentship, set in-line with the Research Council values. For 2024/5, this will be £19,237 per year. The tax-free stipend would be paid monthly. This PhD Studentship would also include a Full-Time Fee Scholarship for up to 3 years. The funding would be subject to your continued registration on the research degree, making satisfactory progression within your PhD, as well as attendance on and successful completion of the Postgraduate Certificate in Research Practice.
All applicants would receive the same stipend irrespective of fee status.
This Studentship is subject to external funding from our partner.
Closing Date for Expressions of Interest:
Midday (UK Time) on Monday 30th September 2024. These projects would be set up with a start date of the 3rd February 2025.
How to Submit an Expression of Interest:
Please note: this opportunity is limited to candidates holding citizenship of a country on the DAC list of ODA recipients.
To submit an expression of interest, please follow the below steps:
- Complete the BCU Online Application Form.
- Complete the Doctoral Studentship Proposal Form in full, ensuring that you quote the project ID. You will be required to upload your proposal in place of a personal statement on the BCU online application form.
- Upload two references to your online application form (at least one of which must be an academic reference).
- Upload your qualification(s) for entry onto the research degree programme. This will be Bachelor/Master’s certificate(s) and transcript(s).
- International applicants must also provide a valid English language qualification. Please see the list of English language qualifications accepted here. Please check the individual research degree course page for the required scores.
Following the above steps will complete the expression of interest process. Our Research Admissions and Funding Teams would be in touch in due course to follow up with you on the status of your expression of interest, and any further steps required.
Project Title:
Analysing the Language of Technology Facilitated Gender-Based Violence
Project Lead:
Dr Tatiana Grieshofer
Project ID:
ADM-01- 41393873
Project Description:
This project will address one of the priority research areas of Meedan’s strategic work in the Larger World (aka Global South): the development of safe and inclusive media ecosystems through challenging technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) and gender disinformation. There is increasing concern globally that women and LGBTQIA+ communities experience high rates of online abuse, perpetuating a climate of fear and self-censorship. Some governments have introduced social media regulation to protect young people from harmful content, and the potential for online gender-based discrimination to spill into the offline world is widely recognised.
The project will take a corpus linguistics approach to examine the language used in harmful communication found on social media and messaging platforms, using a range of large-scale analytical techniques to pinpoint the key characteristics of these kinds of communication, making them easier to identify automatically. Linguistically driven research is well-suited for reflecting on the lived experiences of victims and monitoring how harmful speech emerges and spreads across networks, contributing to tracking potentially harmful communication and limiting the scope of victim exposure. The project will sit alongside other research into machine learning, AI and large language models (LLMs, which underpin chatbots like ChatGPT), and its results will help to make these models more robust, by challenging their biases around the meaning and use of language, especially in terms of locality.
Anticipated findings and contributions to knowledge:
This project will sit alongside other programmatic interventions at Meedan, such as ongoing digital security and digital safety training, and capacity and network building efforts for women and LGBTQAI+ communities to better uncover and respond to TFGBV in their communities. It will also sit alongside research into machine learning, AI and large language models (LLMs, which underpin chatbots like ChatGPT), presently being undertaken by Meedan’s in-house research team. Its results will, in the first instance, help to make these models more robust, by challenging biases around the meaning and use of language, especially in terms of locality. The work will also significantly deepen our understanding of the ways in which gendered misinformation and gender-based violence spreads through social media and messaging services, and the different ways in which this manifests in different language and cultural contexts. Importantly, these findings will be situated in contexts outside the Global North, allowing for a far more inclusive view of the challenges that regulation of social media and messaging platforms present, revealing a greater sense of the diversity of forms that harmful communication can take, and offering insight into the weaknesses of existing approaches to these issues.
Person Specification:
Please note: this opportunity is limited to candidates holding citizenship of a country on the DAC list of ODA recipients.
To apply for this PhD research degree you should have, or expect to be awarded, a Master’s degree in Linguistics or a related subject area.
Exceptional candidates without a Master’s degree, but holding a first class Bachelor’s degree in Linguistics or a related subject area may be considered.
We also welcome enquiries from potential PhD researchers without formal academic qualifications but with appropriate levels of professional experience.
International applicants must also provide a valid English language qualification, such as International English Language Test System (IELTS) or equivalent with an overall score of 7 with no band below 6.5.
A successful candidate will work with supervisors at BCU and at a partner university in an ODA recipient country, as well as spending part of the studentship embedded within the Meedan research team.
For enquiries about the project content, please contact: tatiana.grieshofer@bcu.ac.uk and nick.webber@bcu.ac.uk